Heart Artery Disease

• Introduction
• Chest pain
  • Angina
  • Other chest pain
• Heart attack (myocardial infarction)
  • Introduction
• Assessment of the heart arteries
  • Treadmill stress test
  • Stress echocardiogram
  • Stress nuclear studies
  • Angiogram- invasive
  • Angiogram- CT
• Treatment of heart artery disease
  • Medication
  • Stent treatment
  • Heart bypass surgery

Treadmill Stress Test

The is a relatively easy test to perform. While walking on a treadmill, the ECG or electrocardiogram is recorded.

This test can, on occasions, be normal even when there is disease of the heart arteries. Thus, we may not rely completely on this test when the likelihood of problems with the heart arteries is high.

The treadmill test is more likely to miss the presence of more limited disease of the heart arteries, and is less likely to miss advanced disease of all the major arteries of the heart. This observation means that test remains very useful.

Even in the presence of disease of the heart arteries, the outlook is favourable for those that can exercise for a reasonable time on the treadmill using standard protocols. The result of the test is often used to recommend continued treatment with medication rather than heart bypass surgery.